


Pleasure

by saarebitch



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Blood, Gore, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 00:00:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10685604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saarebitch/pseuds/saarebitch
Summary: Devotees of the Lady of the Hunt engage in Her worship, and the newest Maiden takes up her station.





	Pleasure

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt that came from tumblr awhile ago, I'm just putting this up on AO3 because I can.

The pain had been intense.

Deep, vertical slices down her arms, her legs, her back. The flesh seared closed with a hot iron, then the Pieces of the Whole taken from her, along with the knife that cut, to be burned on the scrying altar to the Maiden. There was no room for recovery, no time to even catch her breath. The magic wasn’t allowed to touch her, to enter her where it hurt so badly that she felt as if she’d die. The pain was a gift. 

And she had not cried out.

The other huntresses took her sacrifice to the Maiden, their steps long and solemn down the hall of her sanctum while she followed close behind. The torches made the golden mosaics glitter in against the encroaching darkness, filling the room with reflecting lights that danced upon the bare backs of the acolytes there. Smoke that filled the chambers stung her eyes, or at least, she thought it did. Perhaps it was the pain instead? It did not matter. If one drop of a tear fell down her cheek, all would be lost, and the now calm, quiet huntresses would become frenzied from The Mother’s Words, and she would ritually torn apart. 

That option she could not bear. So many years of training, so many years of pain leading to this, so much consumptive death did she allow into herself...to lose it now while she was at the cusp was unthinkable. So she bit back those mutinous tears, and waited patiently instead for her sacrifice to be accepted, for when it did, she could finally claim her birthright.

The Pieces of her were poured onto the pyre, and the presiding Maiden of the Sanctum peered into the flames, wrapping her hands around them, choking them, calling upon deep wells of sacred magic to subdue them. She tamed the Pieces of the Whole, binding them to the insubstantial so that it may become subservient to The Mother, and at last, the flames of her flesh were tamed, ready for Her bidding.

_“Andruil does not accept the weak to serve Her.”_

“I am not weak,” she answered the call.

_“Andruil does not accept the foolish to serve Her.”_

“I am not foolish,” she relayed.

_“Strength and cleverness will be all that saves you in Her Domain. Can you survive the Dire Hunt in the Black Forest?”_

“With ease,” she allowed herself some pride as the pain still pierced her to the core.

The Maiden of the Sanctum smiled.

_“Come forth then, and claim my Mantle.”_

She ascended the golden steps leading to the Maiden’s scrying altar, where the flames fed by her flesh waited for her to control, and where the Mantle sat heavily upon the old Maiden’s shoulders. She passed her hands though the flames, burned by them, the pain cutting her so deeply that she could barely stand, but this was hers. It was hers by rights.

She took the blade inside the Flames Fed by Flesh, and slit the throat of the Maiden swiftly. She smiled still at her, ready at last to fulfill her purpose to the Goddess. The cut was not deep enough to kill, but enough to leave the coppered scent in the air, and the huntresses who haunted the Temple smelled it. They were no longer content to be still in the inner sanctum, and fell over themselves to climb the stairs leading to the dying Maiden.

They rended her, ripped her flesh from her body and tore out her bones from underneath. The altar was covered in her life, the Pieces of the whole falling out of the steaming corpse she had become, and in the throne far, far behind the scrying altar, deep into the darkness of the innermost sanctum of the Temple, she heard a deep laugh resonating from the chest, and the barely visible glow of dark red light. The light was conical and moved around in that darkness, chilling her.

“ _I have a new Maiden,_ ” a thunderous chorus of voices called from that darkness, the shapes emitting the red light moving open and shut, “ _Will she serve Me well, I wonder?”_

The new Maiden fell to her knees and threw her hands in the air in supplication, “With my life!”

The darkness seemed to get even darker, an inky blackness that poured down the passage leading to the scrying altar, approaching the Maiden and Her acolytes with blinding speed. The blackness reformed in front of them, taking shape from nothing, the Goddess making Herself known.

She walked the rest of the way to the small group, sticky black bitumen pooling under Her bare feet with every step and Her red dragon’s teeth grinning at them in hunger. The Magic She Controlled swirled around her, the very same inky blackness, and She paid no mind to the acolytes and Maiden who craned their necks to look up at Her in their awe. She rarely appeared outside Her Domain. They had truly been honored.

The Mother of Hares reached Her hand out, letting It float above the mutilated body of the old Maiden, the grimace of death replacing her living smile, and She let the black bitumen drip, drip, drip down onto the entrails splattered across the golden stairs of the Sanctum. Drops fell into the mess of purples and reds and blues, and as the black intermixed, a new color emerged.

White.

White, segmented bodies, writhing and gnashing their tiny maggot teeth as they consumed the remains for their Mistress, absorbing the Pieces of the Whole so that She may grow in Her power. And She did. Her Mouth opened slightly, Her Teeth blazing, and as Her servants ate the Pieces, Her Eyes turned a glassy black like theirs. Her Magic grew around Her, spilling over into the acolytes and the living Maiden, filling them with Her Power as well. It filled them with ecstasy; throbbing, frenzied, glorious ecstacy, and they fell to the floor around Her and writhed as if they were maggots consuming flesh as well. This time, they were allowed to cry, the scream, to moan, and the new Maiden emptied her lungs at the permission.

The Pain had been intense.

But the pleasure…the pleasure elevated it to a new place. A Place In Between. The Maiden scraped her naked body against cold stone and only felt that golden precipice that only The Mother of Hares could offer. 

When at last there was nothing more to consume, the maggots evaporated in the thick, smokey air at the altar, and Andruil turned to the new Maiden gasping on the group, her face flushed and her chest heaving.

_“Take up your Mantle, Maiden, and be proud that I let you participate in the Fate that awaits you once you have served your purpose.”_

Just as the maggots vanished, so did she. Transformed into the black bitumen of her magic, and sinking between the cracks on the stone floor. The new Maiden found the strength to pull herself off the ground, and reached for the Mantle lying in wait. She picked it up and felt the oily stickiness of the Mother of Hare’s Magic clinging to it, and threw it over her shoulders. That Magic sunk into her like a predator sinking its jaws into its prey, and all at once, she was overwhelmed with the duty and sacrifice wearing the sacred ornament entailed.

And the pain it gave her was intense. But the pleasure…...

 


End file.
